The Future of 2nd Edition

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I don't want to be one of those people creating a lot of drama but with Descent's last physical release announcement being May 11, 2016 does anyone have any insight on if we'll see more physical products? I get the ap is great for generating sales of old content and great for them... but as someone who owns EVERYTHING for it I'm curious.

Its been almost a year with no news of a physical product, the development of their new RuneBound Xwing-like game, if you look at Upcoming items there are a lot of items retailers are sold out of that are not ANYWHERE on their upcoming list for reprint (only a few figures awaiting reprint now), the dungeon crawl space is being MUCH more competitive. Is there a decent chance we've seen all the physical stuff we're going to? I get that for some folks that's fine and cool. This isn't an opinion of "do you want more" question but rather a does anyone have insight if we will.

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D2E was being ramped down. It had a long cycle and IA was taking over. Doom and MoM2E were in the project plan. As a test bed for MoM2E (and other future projects) RtL was created, to give some life to D2E in a low risk environment. Runewars miniatures was planned, so the setting is going on, buy maybe time for a break before D3E or something a bit different (talisman replacement?).

Then RtL got rave reviews and sales went through the roof. This allowed it to get another campaign quickly, which also appears to be an experiment in boosting expansion sales.

From here, it may be that RtL has turned D2E around and it will have a long life, but you can't suddenly come up with physical production that you didn't have in your roadmap, so even if they are being worked on now this would explain the gap.

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D2E was being ramped down. It had a long cycle and IA was taking over. Doom and MoM2E were in the project plan. As a test bed for MoM2E (and other future projects) RtL was created, to give some life to D2E in a low risk environment. Runewars miniatures was planned, so the setting is going on, buy maybe time for a break before D3E or something a bit different (talisman replacement?).

Then RtL got rave reviews and sales went through the roof. This allowed it to get another campaign quickly, which also appears to be an experiment in boosting expansion sales.

From here, it may be that RtL has turned D2E around and it will have a long life, but you can't suddenly come up with physical production that you didn't have in your roadmap, so even if they are being worked on now this would explain the gap.

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When other long running games "finished" FFG has tried to complete the set.

Call of cthulhu got deluxe boxes for all the factions, arkham horror got an expansion that expanded all the other expansions, invasion got multiplayer rules and upgraded several minor races to playable factions.

FFG wouldn't stop making physical descent while there was such a glaring hole in the game.

The previous descent releases were tied to both battlelore and runebound, releasing undead across all the games at once. The next wave may be tied to the next runewars faction to be released.

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It would seem odd to be winding down a game which has such a high score over at board game geek - but FFG have their sales figures so maybe the high score at BGG doesn't translate heavily into ongoing sales?

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- There's still that DJ06 mystery which in the alternation logic could be a big box of some sort (I have my own DJ06 theories already shared)

- FFG seem to be on a news cycle at the moment- have been fairly regular updates on other game families so IF D2e is selling well I feel we may get some news soon

however

- the current Terrinoth / Runebound games family focus is the miniatures- I think they'll get those launched first maybe before returning to other games in the family, they may even do the smart thing and overlap the content if they are wise enough to know the temptation value of having some quality alternative miniatures available from the miniatures game, it would be clever I think to use some of these as alternatives for lieutenants / heroes that would fit both games, and really awesome if they made cards to bring some of the figures in as monsters (the carrion worms are particularly great, for example) thus you could buy the minis figure to use in Descent (and if you play the minis game in both). I'm already liking the idea of using the minis Lord Hawthorne and some of the others although you'd have to consider base sizes. There's crossover sales potential if they are wise.

- similarly I think they're building up Road To Legend for various strategic reasons but these may also lead into a new D2e release and there are claims of some new heroes in RTL, if this is true that could be a hint of more to come

- another important point is I think D2e's base set had recently sold out but is now back in stock, a few key lieutenants including core game ones have sold out, so another factor might have been waiting til the game had been reprinted before launching more new content (it would be a bit odd to have expansion content on sale while the core game was out of stock, not sure how long it was out of stock but that might also explain the delay to new content)

- the current release version of D2e seems to be 2015 based on the date in my core set rulebook (possibly when they made Heirs of Blood the core set campaign?) so it's recent enough to not be concerned about it being abandoned

- it could be that the next release is a major one, or/and it may just be that the gaps will get bigger as the more content there is the more you don't want to overwhelm new players with lots of options and need to pace releases a bit.

Whatever the case, I for one really hope for some new D2e content especially some of that currently missing from D1e (not much but there is some including some of the lieutenants I missed out on first time round) and some new environments tile-wise. Integrating the Terrinoth/ Runewars elements more which has been a recent trend would also be great.

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We still haven't had the "Darth Maul" faction from BattleLore show up in Descent 2nd Edition. I personally feel that the "Third" Edition will be more like a 2.5 Edition with tweaked rules for OverLord Player variants. Remember that the Second Edition of CaveTroll simply replace tokens with Miniatures & the Second Edition of Kingdoms replace the Castle Tokens with Plastic Castles, changed the Artwork of the Tiles, added the Wizard Tile, & made a bigger/folding Board instead of the Puzzle Piece Board in the 1E. CaveTroll 2E & Kingdoms 2E haven't changed the gameplay only changed some cosmetics.

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Awesome to see this topic! As a fan of descent that has bought everything ffg will put out with the descent brand I really can't get enough of this game!

I think like others I myself am looking forward to see if Runewars the miniature game does well, as there really is some fantastic foundation to really flesh out the world of Terrinoth and even place all the games in a kind of time line or series of senario's contributing to a larger world. We really have to see what FFG want to do with it.

What I would personally like to see however is not Descent take on the rule set of Imperial Assault as they are intended to be different games albeit using a similar structure, what I feel would be better, if there was a variant using the rule set rather than a updated base game.

Some Ideas Id like to see personally for Descent 2nd edition that could really expand on the franchise (and this is off the top of my head while sat at work :P) I normally play an overlord in my games so many of my ideas come from an overlords perspective, im sure many hero fanatics out there *shakes fist* can add hero ideas maybe^^

- Overlord alterations

By this I mean, the overlord having different aims rather than simply defeating the heroes. A good example would be an overlord attempting to start a war, and each map in the standard lead up campaign having objectives where the overlord player gains resources - they allow him to buy things for the finale like extra units or bonuses for that finale.

- Lawful overlord actions

Not all overlords have to be chaotic evil, what about an idea where the Overlord and heroes battle for influence over a event or faction, that faction then joins either side, or sway a council could be a cool theme

- Time based descent

Maybe have maps or a campaign based on the concept of time, turns equal certain of time that has past and have events in maps happen/conclude based on the number of turns past?

- A concept from another game brought over is what about heroes having pasts, cards that can be used similarly to tainted cards, but can either change based on player choices in maps, die a player die heroically? his undisclosed past is a bit brighter, or maybe they did it for another reason? even secret objective cards that can add a new layer of depth to the heroes currently - like having to kill the most monsters on a map or... DUM DUM DUM! reveal

maybe even something the overlord can manipulate!

These are just a few ideas anyway, but there is loads of life left in descent imho, its really down to what FFG envision for the future of the franchise!

P.s Elf based campaign please set in between elves deciding to join the overlord and elves that want to fight his regime

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I might be wrong, but by my count from the conversion kit, there are 12 hero's that haven't had the Hero and Monsters treatment yet. I'd hope that there will be 3 more hero and monsters kits to come out.

Which would be awesome because Tobin Farslayer hasn't been updated yet and doesn't show up in the app.

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When 2nd edition was released it took good ideas from all the 1st edition expansions and combined them into a base set. A lot of the best bits of 2nd edition did not appear in the core set, a new base game that brought all those ideas together would be great.

I love descent (I have the full 1st and 2nd edition with all the metal miniatures, promo heros, OP kits and realms of terrinoth quests) but after all this time my eye is starting to wander. My Kickstarter list is full of similar games (folklore the affliction, deep madness, massive darkness etc.) And it's already competing for table time with imperial assault.

I need a 3rd edition, runewars tie-in or something else to put the wow factor back into descent.

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But there aren't any more monsters and no H&M packs have been announced, so don't get your hopes up.

The Crow Hags from Treaty of Champions weren't from the 1ED, they were made up for the 2ED. I feel that they're focusing on RW & IA this year and then get Descent 2ED next year (I'd rather have no news then bad news). I'm thinking next year they'll make a big Legends Box that'll have:

The remaining CK Heroes

New Monsters

Adding missing Classes to have them all even.

The Shadow Rune Campaign

A balanced version of Lair of The Wrym (No reinforcements in Valyndra's Lair?!? )

Updated Rules for the future "Third" Edition.

With the success of RtL I don't see them reprinting the Cards, Minis, or Map Tiles as they would have to completely overhaul the App & fans would be furious.

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I don't think there is a Descent 3.0 coming anytime soon, because I don't see any reason for doing one, and if I say that then it must be true. Anyway, sales are good for this game, there are apps on the market, gameplay is established regardless if there are grey areas or not, and there seems to be a dedicated fan-base despite concurrent products hitting the market constantly with arguably better gameplay and (not so arguably) miniatures. Releasing D3E would necessarly mean releasing new gameplay, as you don't just release a new game to put new templates on your cards and I think the miniatures are still okay for quite some time (we'll see if they still meet the standards in 1-2 years time, though... some games are currently releasing miniatures that completely puts the FFG ones to shame).

Which is good for the wallet. I'm starting a Gloomhaven campaign next time and for once I don't have to worry about having to interrupt the campaign to come back to Descent because an expansion just got released by FFG, which happened to us all the time.

There is also this general trend nowadays to streamline games to death when releasing new iterations. I like streamlining as a process, as I am not the kind of person enjoying games taking ages to finish, but there's still a danger that something working properly gets dumbed down to oblivion just to be able to advertise the game to a broader public. I´ll pass on the artistic direction going anime instead of oldschool role play art to attract the masses (videogamers in particular).

Sometimes it is good to wait for feedback before releasing more products. We´'ve been spoiled with tons of material. I feel like the latest campaigns were on the edge of exploring new directions for the game, although they did not go all the way and were made a bit too conservatively to my taste. Maybe (this is speculation) FFG is coming to a crossroad where they could either release more "stuff" to enrich the game without touching the core gameplay (in which case there is no rush), or design new types of campaigns introducing more interesting mechanisms, therefore extending the product's life. The latter being a bit risky.

There must be a roadmap for this game, and I think the most plausible reason for the lack of recent news is that the game is not prioritized at the moment, possibly because the game has already a lot of content and sells well anyway, so focus is put on other product lines trying to grow to that level of establishment.

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I might be wrong, but by my count from the conversion kit, there are 12 hero's that haven't had the Hero and Monsters treatment yet. I'd hope that there will be 3 more hero and monsters kits to come out.

Which would be awesome because Tobin Farslayer hasn't been updated yet and doesn't show up in the app.